The Tent and the Field

This Wednesday is Veterans Day. This Shabbat, Jews around the world read Parashat Toldot, the Torah portion that tells the story of twin brothers, Jacob and Esau.

We usually read it as a rivalry between two people. I would like to read it through a different lens, through Esau: as the story of someone who goes out to the field and then returns home.

This is not the traditional reading of the text. Jacob and Esau are two brothers, and our tradition understands them to be two distinct nations. Typically, we focus on Jacob, his righteousness, and contrast him with Esau, the brute. But I think we have something to learn from Esau’s experience.

A man of the field

When the boys grow up, the Torah describes them in a single verse: “The boys grew up. Esau became a skilled hunter, a man of the field, and Jacob a quiet man who stayed among the tents.” (Genesis 25:27)

Rashi, the great medieval commentator, notices that while they were small, no one could tell them apart. Only when they grew up did each go his own way (Rashi on Genesis 25:27).

Jewish tradition is hard on Esau, the one who was in the field, the one who fought and hunted. I want to be clear that I am not utilizing that judgment here. I am highlighting the image of a man in the field versus that of a man in the tent. Every person who has served has been both. They grew up in a tent with their family, school, a familiar and ordinary life. Then they were asked to go out to the field and become someone who could do hard and dangerous things.

Hineni

Isaac is old now, and his eyes have grown dim. He calls his son, “My son,” and Esau answers with one word, Hineni, “Here I am” (Genesis 27:1).

It is the same word Abraham answered when God called him (Genesis 22:1). It is the answer of someone who is willing and ready before he even knows what will be asked.

Then his father asks, “Now, please, take up your gear, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field so that I may bless you with all my soul before I die.” (Genesis 27:3–4) And the Torah says simply, “And Esau went to the field” (Genesis 27:5).

This is how so many of our veterans went out to the field. Their nation said please and they answered Here I am. They picked up their gear and walked out into the field, believing that when they came home, a blessing would be waiting for them.

Who are you?

While Esau is gone, Jacob goes to their father, dressed as his brother. Isaac cannot see. He asks, “Who are you, my son?” (Genesis 27:18) Then he reaches out and touches him, and he is confused: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” (Genesis 27:22)

Jacob has barely left the room, “just as he was going out,” when Esau walks in from the hunt (Genesis 27:30). He has done everything he was asked. He has cooked the food his father loves, and he carries it in with his own hands.

Picture him. Tired. Proud. Home at last. Holding out what he brought back from the field. Waiting for his reward.

And his father, the man who sent him, asks, “Who are you?” (Genesis 27:32)

It is the same question Isaac asked Jacob, the son at home. Now he asks it of Esau, the son who went out. And Esau says to his father: “I am your son, your firstborn, Esau.”

“And Isaac trembled, a very great trembling.”

Genesis 27:33

His father trembles, because he understands that the blessing he promised is gone. And the son who came home from the field breaks. “He cried out with a great and very bitter cry, and said to his father, ‘Bless me too, my father.’” (Genesis 27:34)

He asks, “Haven’t you saved a blessing for me?” (Genesis 27:36) His father, helpless, answers, “What can I do for you, my son?” (Genesis 27:37) And then, “And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.” (Genesis 27:38)

A grown man. A hunter. The one who seems so strong and hard, weeping in his father’s tent.

Haven’t you saved a blessing for me?

Not every veteran asks that question. Many come home whole and proud. But many others know some version of that cry, even if they never say it out loud. They went because they were asked. They came home to find that what they needed had not been saved for them: employment, care, understanding, a place to belong, someone who would listen.

The rabbis never forgot Esau’s tears. One midrash teaches that God is patient but does not simply let things go. Jacob caused his brother to cry out once, and generations later, in the Persian city of Shushan, Jacob’s descendant Mordechai cried out in the very same words, “a great and bitter cry” (Esther Rabbah 8:1).

That is an interpretation, not the plain story, but I believe that a cry that goes unanswered does not disappear. It echoes, sometimes for generations, through families. Children grow up in its shadow without ever knowing where it came from.

Isaac does not send his son away empty. He searches and finds a blessing for the one who went out to the field. It is a hard one: “By your sword you shall live.” (Genesis 27:40)

The field will always be part of Esau’s life. That is both a blessing and a burden, a burden which many of our veterans carry even when their service ends.

Wrestling in the dark

The story does not get resolved in Parashat Toldot. The two halves are split apart for twenty years. Next week, in the following Torah portion, Jacob is about to meet Esau again. The night before, “Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.” (Genesis 32:25)

Who was this man? Rashi tells us the rabbis identified him as the angel of Esau (Rashi on Genesis 32:25). Alone, in the dark, Jacob wrestles with Esau.

He does not win by throwing the other away. He holds on: “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:27). He comes out of that night with a new name, Israel, and with a wound. The next morning, the brothers run to each other, embrace, and weep (Genesis 33:4).

I can’t think of a truer picture of coming home. The work is not to cut off the part of you that went to the field. It is to wrestle with it, often alone, and to hold on until it gives you a blessing. Some come out limping. Many come out with a new name, and a strength that only someone who has struggled can carry.

What we owe them

So what do those of us who stayed in the tents owe our veterans this week?

When they were called, they answered Hineni, Here I am. Now it is our turn to say it back. Don’t make them say their own name to you like a stranger. Welcome the voice and the hands. When you ask “Who are you now?”, ask it with love, and stay long enough to hear the answer. And save a blessing for them. Don’t make anyone ask twice.

May every veteran who went out to the field come home to find a blessing saved for them. May those who wrestle in the dark be held. And may each of us, when they come through the door, be ready to say: Hineni. Here I am.